Month: April 2016

I see a lot of talk on Etsy sellers forums about getting views. Your goal should not be to get views, but to get relevant views that will lead to sales. Getting relevant views on Etsy requires relevant keywords and tags. You get relevant keywords and tags by thinking like a buyer, and doing your research on EtsyRank.

A case study: Let’s say you’re trying to sell a green purse with a blue zipper from the 1950s on Etsy. You have 13 tags available. I often see many tags wasted on terms that would be absolutely irrelevant to the buyer. For the purse, bad tags would look a little like this:

blue zipper

1950s, or ’50s

Vintage accessories

Green accessories

Good tags for the purse would look like this:

Green purse

Green handbag

Vintage purse

Emerald purse

See the difference?

Good Etsy SEO targets potential buyers of the item. Bad Etsy SEO may lead to clicks, but how many people searching for “blue zipper” are actually thinking of buying a purse? The majority of people searching “green purse” are in the market–you guessed it–a green purse. A click from a “green purse” searcher is therefore much, much more valuable than a click from the “blue zipper” person.

And, of course, a shameless plug! As always check out my Etsy shop, Ravelry or Instagram pages, and pick up a great knit or crochet pattern.

The name of your Etsy shop is important. It gives potential customers a good idea of what your shop is about, and serves as a powerful branding tool.

The name of your Etsy shop can be harmful as well. Nobody wants to buy a baby romper from “SexiGrrrrl2000”, or any other item for that matter.

Good names are short and give a rough overview of what one might expect to find on the shop. It’s especially important to keep the name of your Etsy shop short if you intend to use Twitter, since “#SexiGrrrrl2000sVintageBoutique” takes up a lot more characters than “#yarrrrrn” (a pirate themed yarn shop perhaps?)

Good names are:

Short, simple and to the point

Descriptive

Catchy

Look professional

Easy to remember and hard to forget

Bad names are:

Long (JuliasPhotographyAndPhotographySupplies)

Provide inadequate or no description of the shop (JuliaOnEtsy)

Boring/Forgettable (JuliasCrochetPatternShop)

Unprofessional (SexiGrrrrl2000sVintageBoutique)

Now, you might be reading this and saying to yourself “my Etsy shop has a terrible name.” Well, you’re in luck. Changing the name of your Etsy shop is simple. You can instantly change your Etsy shop name:

Log on to Etsy

Go to “Your Shop” in the upper right hand corner

Click “Info and Appearance”

Click “Shop Name”

Enter in your new, great Etsy shop name!

If you need help coming up with an effective name for your Etsy shop, feel free to message me on Etsy, through my Etsy shop: yarnhole. Feel free to buy a crochet pattern or two while you’re there!